Five-decade UK study finds that aggression at school leads to better-paying jobs, while those with emotional instability went on to earn less
Children who displayed aggressive behaviour at school, such as bullying or temper outbursts, are likely to earn more money in middle age, according to a five-decade study that upends the maxim that bullies do not prosper.
They are also more likely to have higher job satisfaction and be in more desirable jobs, say researchers from the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex.
The paper, published today, used data about almost 7,000 people born in 1970 whose lives have been tracked by the British Cohort Study. The research team examined data from primary school teachers who assessed the children’s social and emotional skills when they were 10 years old in 1980, and matched it to their lives at the age of 46 in 2016.
“We found that those children who teachers felt had problems with attention, peer relationships and emotional instability did end up earning less in the future, as we expected, but we were surprised to find a strong link between aggressive behaviour at school and higher earnings in later life,” said Prof Emilia Del Bono, one of the study’s authors.
Makes sense. If you’re willing to take advantage of others, you can get advantages.
And these days, retaliation against adult bullies is not so straight forward.
Not to mention psychopathic tendencies are required to excel as an exec
Adult bullies are often idolized in our culture. They’re certainly rewarded in corporate workplaces where abusing others and not caring is seen as a sign of purposefulness and strength.
Exactly… and on the flip side, standing up for workplace injustice is a sign of insubordination and is punished. Even objectively discussing power dynamics gets a negative/uncomfortable reaction in my experience.
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It’s almost like capitalism is designed to make sociopathy the more successful survival strategy
Oh man the “Capitalism bad” button is going to get really really tired at this pace.
Maybe bullies have been around and thriving even prior to capitalism. I bet lots of people would have felt “bullied” by Genghis Khan.
They didn’t suggest bullying is exclusive to capitalism, right?
Maybe bullies are more prosperous in particular economic systems.
It’s worse. Certain economic and social systems are designed to make the only viable, or most viable, survival strategy to be a sociopath or worse. Most people are forced to cosplay that at some level in these systems, whether they have those traits naturally or not, in order to survive. And despite human nature being communal, it’s more powerful in survival adaptation.
I think “bullies prosper” is a part of the human condition
And it worked for genghis as it does for capitalists. What’s the issue?
Maybe it shouldn’t
Be the change you want to see my guy.
I am, I was just responding to your question
I’m morbidly curious as to when you think capitalism started, considering your take here :V
Hint: it was fire
Yeah, bigger rams have been knocking around smaller rams since the advent of fire, which was when capitalism started. Thanks for all the big brain takes on this, I wish I’d get a better tally of how many complete dumbasses there are around here. 70 and counting.
Thank you for being my first block here, you galactic brain simpleton, you ;)
Capitalism rewards cut-throat behavior. No surprises there.
I mean that’s part of it but I think something that’s being overlooked is the overall mentality.
A bully who is used to getting their way and getting what they want is probably not going to have a hard time negotiating for higher pay when it comes to a job. They’re also probably more likely to leave a job that’s unsatisfactory. They’re also going to have higher levels of confidence.
Meanwhile I remember when I was a kid being told to keep my head down, keep my nose clean, don’t make waves, work hard to be rewarded and get ahead… And that’s just not how you get ahead.
Just a theory.
It would be the same in communism or any political system. Bullies will end up with the most influence.
Bullying is a part of British culture, the “yes m’lord” attitude is still strong within them, don’t cause a fuss, “keep calm and carry on” is their motto for a reason…
https://theweek.com/101863/why-england-s-schools-are-among-worst-in-world-for-bullying
https://www.agencycentral.co.uk/articles/does-the-uk-have-a-workplace-bullying-problem/
As someone who has spent half their life in the UK and the other half in the USA, specifically the English are particularly nasty and have a strange admiration for the “clever bully”, both in school and at work. That isn’t to say the USA doesn’t have bullies, they’re just not as universally admired.
but we were surprised to find a strong link between aggressive behaviour at school and higher earnings in later life
I do not see how a normal human adult who has ever, like, worked in a corporate environment or customer service or ever read the political section of a newspaper or even literally just caught secondhand wind of the 2016 US election would instinctively believe that aggressive behavior doesn’t pay as an adult.
Either this person is a bully themselves, or we need to hook them up to some 19th century testing apparatus so we can extract whatever essence of naïveté and primal innocence they are apparently overproducing.
Isn’t a bully just a baby bird trying to push another bird out of the nest?
This study really flips the script on what we thought we knew about childhood behavior. It’s wild to think that kids who were aggressive in school—often seen as troublemakers—could end up with better-paying jobs and more satisfaction. It raises tough questions about how early traits shape success, and what society rewards in adulthood.
